Roberto, The Card Girl And I

March 4, 1990|BY MATT SCHUDEL, Staff Writer.

I`M NOT SURE WHAT I EXPECTED THAT night -- klieg lights scanning the sky, maybe, or a long line of sleek limos, with fluffed-hair showgirls waiting at the front door to show me in. But there was no hint of excitement at the hotel in Hollywood, no sign pointing toward the promise of a primal, almost illicit thrill.

I had to stop and ask for directions to my first night at the fights.

I`ve heard all the arguments about boxing -- about how it`s a brutal sport whose purpose is to cause pain, to make another man bleed, to knock him unconscious. Taking an interest in boxing these days is not exactly, shall we say, socially correct.

Yet no other sport has such a raw, naked appeal. There has always been something furtive about boxing and the shadowy male world in which it takes place.

Of the 500 or so people who came that night to watch the fights, probably 400 were men. They had confident, well-fed faces and wore gold on their hands and around their necks. They were the kind of men who dress more carefully for the night than for the day.

The women who accompanied them were trying just as hard to hold on to the fast, glamorous flash of youth. They wore their skirts short and their tops tight. They knew they were being watched, and they didn`t seem to mind.

Seven fights were on the card, including one with a washed-up ex-world champion. A cable television network had come to town to see if the former champ still had the fire.

After each round of the fights, a buxom card girl strutted around the ring, carrying a placard with the number of the next round. The card girls were all overdone blondes in bikinis and go-go outfits. The men cheered and leered.

After her exhibitionistic work was over, one of the card girls -- more or less fully clothed -- was introduced to Roberto Duran. The most famous celebrity in the audience that night, Duran had recently won the middleweight championship of the world. I don`t know what they said, since Duran speaks almost no English. But they soon strolled out the door together, Duran draping his arm around the card girl`s shoulders.

A few minutes later she was back in the room, having a few indignant words with Duran`s friends. The champion himself returned shortly afterward, content to spend the rest of the night signing autographs and basking in adoration.

All the while, the fights went on. I sat 30 feet from the ring and could hear the muffled slap of leather against skin. I saw the fighters` heads snap back with the force of the punches. Showers of sweat flying from their hair looked like halos in the bright lights above the ring.

When a good punch landed, excitement rippled through the crowd, but it wasn`t the frightening blood lust you find among the fans of, say, professional wrestling or English soccer. What the fans admired most was the skill of the boxers and the shifting drama of the fights.

MOST OF THE FIGHTERS WERE BLACK OR Hispanic, but one of them was a local favorite, a tanned, mild-looking young man from Hollywood with the nickname, ``Jewish Jewel.`` He knocked out his opponent in the first round.

When the ex-champion, Harry Arroyo, step- ped in the ring to fight a journeyman boxer named Roger Brown, it was sadly apparent that Arroyo had lost his touch. Blood streaked down the left side of his face through the entire fight. At one point he was hit with 15 punches in a row without throwing one of his own. But he fought gamely and never went down.

After Brown won the fight in a unanimous decision, the boxers shook hands like old friends, and in a way they were. Sure, they had tried to hurt each other -- that`s the point of their sport. But respect grows when two men have fought each other with their fists and their wits.

Boxing is a brutal sport, but it also has a ceremonious dignity about it. It is, after all, a ritual of grace and violence. Men choose this hard life in most cases because the life they knew before was even harder. They learn a discipline in boxing and become part of a culture that is ancient, if not dignified. Old men pass on their years of knowledge to young men whose dreams are as strong and smooth as their bodies. Surely there is something good in that.

You can almost see the young fighters grow as men during a fight. Each bobs his head, throws his jab, dances out of danger in a way that is his alone. Fighting becomes a form of expression. Something comes through of each man`s spirit. He is bare to the world and cannot hide from his opponent or from himself.

The fighters I saw that night sometimes bled and sometimes were knocked down, but they were not beaten. They seemed somehow ennobled.

By the time the last fight was over, the TV crews had taken down their cameras, Roberto Duran had gone home and the card girls were fully clothed. The Jewish Jewel was walking hand in hand with his girlfriend. Roger Brown, who had beaten the former champion, slipped away unnoticed, a battered suitcase in his hand. Fans who stayed for all seven fights went to the front door of the hotel to pick up their cars.

Then suddenly, there she was again, the strutting card girl, the one-minute escort of Roberto Duran. She had paid $4 to park her car, she shouted, and she deserved better treatment. She pounded on the chest of some confused parking attendant, shrieking curses in his face.

``You`re going to be dead meat!`` she screamed.

Security agents from the hotel quickly converged, and the woman slammed the door of her sports car and drove off into the darkness.